Meet the Dinosaur That Started It All — Rebuilt in 3D

Fourteen desktop 3D printers spent seven weeks producing the bones of a dinosaur that lived roughly 166 million years ago. The result is now on display at Blenheim Palace in England, where five nine-meter-long Megalosaurus sculptures have taken over the grounds as part of a new outdoor exhibition called Dinosaurs Are Forever.

British artist Jay Jay Burridge created the installation through his studio Future Fossils. But rather than carving the enormous skeletons by hand or producing them with traditional fabrication methods, the team turned to desktop 3D printing. To produce the printed bones, Future Fossils worked with Gerard Shields of UK additive manufacturing firm Printpool. Shields used 14 Bambu Lab printers running over seven weeks to make Burridge’s redesigned bones in ABS-GF, an ABS filament reinforced with glass fiber. After printing, the parts were sent to the Future Fossils workshop for final finishing and assembly.

Why Megalosaurus Matters

The project is a particularly fitting use of 3D printing because of the dinosaur it recreates. Megalosaurus holds an important place in paleontology: fossils found in Oxfordshire were studied by geologist William Buckland, who formally named the animal in 1824. It became the first dinosaur to receive a scientific name, although nobody called it a dinosaur at the time — the term “Dinosauria” would not be introduced until 1842. Now, more than 200 years later, Megalosaurus has returned to Oxfordshire in a very different way.

“It’s perfectly logical that dinosaurs of the future should be 3D printed,” Burridge said. “We’re taking creatures from 166 million years ago and rebuilding them with the technology of today.”

Art Meets Science in Every Bone

These aren’t meant to be conventional museum skeletons. Burridge worked with Dr. Matt Dempsey, a musculoskeletal biologist, vertebrate paleontologist, and scientific illustrator who completed his PhD with the University of Liverpool and London’s Natural History Museum. Together, they developed a new interpretation of Megalosaurus based on its fossils and evidence from closely related dinosaurs.

From there, Burridge took the designs beyond a traditional dinosaur reconstruction. The finished sculptures mix science, art, and engineering, with skeletons that look part dinosaur and part machine. Each is built around a lightweight movable frame, with individual bones that were either 3D printed or carved by hand.

From a Desktop Printer to a Nine-Meter Dinosaur

What stands out is that the project didn’t require a large industrial 3D printer. Instead, Printpool used desktop machines to produce parts that could later be brought together into sculptures far bigger than the printers themselves. It’s a great example of how a print farm can scale up for a large project — running many machines in parallel, managing long print schedules, and finishing parts into a single cohesive build.

“Supporting the first-ever 3D-printed reconstruction of Megalosaurus — the world’s first discovered dinosaur — is a powerful example of how modern technology can bring ancient stories to life,” said Nadia Yaakoubi, Bambu Lab’s head of PR and communications.

The location also brings the story full circle. Blenheim Palace is in Oxfordshire, where the original Megalosaurus fossils were found. Two hundred years after Oxfordshire introduced the world to Megalosaurus, visitors can now walk beneath a nine-meter version of it. Dinosaurs Are Forever runs through November 1, 2026, in the gardens at Blenheim Palace, and the original fossils remain on display at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

How TT3DPrint Can Help

Projects like this show what desktop 3D printing can achieve at scale — and that’s exactly what we do every day. At TT3DPrint, we operate a large fleet of Bambu Lab machines, the same printers used for the Megalosaurus sculptures, producing everything from custom figurines and dinosaur models to educational tools, prototypes, and creative gifts. Whether you need a single detailed model or a batch of hundreds of parts that must fit together perfectly, our print farm is built to scale.

Looking for custom 3D printed products or a full-service printing partner for your next project? Contact us for a quote — we deliver worldwide.

Conclusion

The Blenheim Palace Megalosaurus is proof that desktop 3D printing — not just industrial systems — can bring ambitious creative visions to life. From a 166-million-year-old dinosaur to your next custom design, the technology of today is ready to rebuild anything you can imagine.